Depending on the execution, this could be “art” but it could also just be “a thing on the internet.”

When I admit that I wasn’t allowed to watch much television — except for Benson, which my uncle was on, and the evening news, which was educational/nightmare-inducing, in the Reagan years — people always ask what I was allowed to do. Well, I was allowed to watch movies, for one thing, even R-rated movies provided they possessed sufficient artistic merit. By this logic The Godfather was okay (Coppola), but Night Court was not (?). Lest you think I was raised in some hoity-toity high-brow cultural surroundings, let me assure you, Monty Python also passed muster, as did Kenny Rogers records — and, later, Kokomo-era Beach Boys, Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) and the YM subscription that my grandparents bought me for Christmas. At the time it seemed to make sense.

I read, too. There were no limits regarding reading material. Violence? War? Adult themes? Fine, on paper. My father collected the Doonesbury books and I spent the better part of 1986 parsing Death of a Party Animal, trying to understand the jokes. I was nine. There was probably something good on TV. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I went through a snobbish phase where I measured a book’s value by its word count; this led to the Year of the Russians, in which I told anyone who’d listen that I was slogging through War and Peace (although I’m sure I put it in loftier terms). Finally, after turning the last triumphant page, I told my mother that I’d liked the epic well enough, but felt the ending was weak — too abrupt, too many plot lines left unresolved. That’s when she pointed out the Vol. I in small print on my paperback’s spine. I never mustered the energy to tackle volume two.

As an adult this is fascinating to me, the cultural references we amass and the ones that pass by us like sheep in the night, how they frame the way we write and talk and think and regard the world. Which brings me to the title of this post, Neon Spaghetti. That was the name of my first zine. It consisted of twelve xeroxed pages, no name or attribution, and I made twenty copies. I don’t remember everything it contained, but I know my friend D. and I had reworked many of our gripes about the pettiness of public high school into anonymous screeds — scathing satire, we thought. I did the bulk of the writing but D. helped me linger after the final bell in order to slip copies into lockers chosen at random. The plan was for the recipients to discover the zine the next morning, read it, be blown away by its daring wit/fiery truths, and spread the word to everyone else in the hallway. We wanted it to go viral, even though such a phrase did not exist back then.

Morning came, lockers opened, and Neon Spaghetti got the same response I got at Waterville High: most people ignored it, several made fun of it, a few people said it was interesting or at least well-intentioned. The following year I abandoned the anonymous classroom ranting approach and began a proper zine, one that had my name on it and was distributed just about everywhere except my high school, and that worked out well for a number of years. All of this happened because the Mister Paperback bookstore on Upper Main Street received two copies of Sassy each month, and I’d buy one and Leslie would buy the other, and that is how I learned what a zine was, courtesy of Christina Kelly’s Zine-O-the-Month feature.

Anyway, sometimes I wonder what might have happened if I hadn’t picked up that magazine, or if I’d been watching something on television instead, or if my parents had cracked down on my mail-order habit when the envelopes and manila packages began piling up. What if, instead of knowing the Cometbus tagline, I knew the theme song to Who’s the Boss? What if I could make jokes about Gary Coleman without having to Wikipedia him? What if I’d gone to parties where everyone was singing along to the new Michael Jackson album? What if I’d gotten invited to parties?

Sometimes I think all our differences are differences in place — cultural place as well as geographical place, the way my Texan cousins said “crown” instead of “crayon” and wore wind shorts before anyone I knew in Maine. And whenever I bring this up in conversation someone inevitably says something along the lines of, The internet is erasing all these interesting differences, everyone exists in the same cultural place, the internet has made the entire concept of place virtually (ha!) meaningless. Etc.

Maybe. I’m not prepared to believe that quite yet. Right now I think the nice thing about the internet is the fact that it gives us an efficient way of telling other people what it’s like where we are and finding out what it’s like where they are.

For example, I just told you about publishing an anonymous, carob-stained, G.B. Trudeau-fueled zine in central Maine. I did that right here on the internet.

The players: A woman, 40s-ish; her teenage son; an Unrelated Observer. All are in line (also known as “on line”) at the checkout.

Son: Hey, we forgot something. Be right back. [Son dashes away and returns moments later with a box of granulated sugar.]
Mom: Why do we need sugar?
Son: For the Kool-Aid mix.
Mom: I’m pretty sure that has sugar in it. It’s in the mix already.
Son: No, we have to add sugar.
Mom (reading label): It says it has sugar…
Son (turning the package of Kool-Aid over): No, see? It says “reduced sugar.” So we have to add some.
Mom: Oh, okay, you’re right.

* * *

Sometimes when the car thuds over a bad frost heave I think the phrase “frost heave, a roadway,” to the tune of “Frosty the Snowman.” Try it yourself and see!

* * *

After three decades on this planet I have decided I like the taste of coconut. I have no idea why or how this happened. It reminds me of when I was thirteen, the year I grew three inches between April and July — what up, cells that form my being? Who’s in charge here?

* * *

I have read, or am reading, a long list of books right now, some for “work” and some for “pleasure” although there is a sizeable subset that qualifies as both — a most enjoyable turn of events. Highlights include Ed Lin’s This Is a Bust, which evokes New York’s Chinatown so vividly I can see the sidewalks, smell the eels in white plastic tubs; Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask, which I’d been saving for a treat and now cannot put down; Game Change, which is exactly the way you think it is; and fellow New England nonfiction buff Elyssa East’s Dogtown, which is both thrilling and impeccably researched.

FYI, southern Maine, events of note on the horizon: speaking of Ed Lin, he’s visiting Portland on Saturday, April 11. Don’t miss it. Also pay attention to “Heroic Tales from Portland” this Wednesday the 7th and the Maine Festival of the Book (April 9-11) — oh yes, and of course the first-ever Scratchpad Reading Series event on April 20.

Not bad for the little city. Not bad at all.

* * *

The post-procedure painkillers I popped half an hour ago are working their magic. My mouth has stopped hurting, the world’s edges have softened, my thoughts are verging on the grandiose. This is the point at which I should either stop typing or start typing faster.

A reliable source has suggested it’s time for bed. It probably is.

I’ve been feeling type-ish of late, despite having less time than ever to type things that are not on the regular typing schedule. Perhaps I will come back here and type for you soon. Perhaps I will even re-introduce the concept of “paragraphs,” which I’m told are all the rage these days. (LOL.)

I have, however, seen every single episode of Three’s Company. And Benson. And at least 95% of the entire Law & Order series.

This weekend I found myself in a maternity store on the Upper East Side, where I saw strange and terrible things I never knew existed: bras with snaps, maxi-pads for boobs (?!), Sevens with an eight-inch strip of black elastic sprouting from the waistband. At the register they sold boxes of hard candies called Preggie-Pops. I looked at the ingredients list. It was nothing but brown rice syrup and flavoring, but the price was $6 for 30 lozenges because the box featured a picture of a circular woman smiling in a field. She had one sweater tied around her neck and another sweater flung casually over her shoulder. Perhaps this is normal, for the Preggie-Pops demographic.

Things make sense according to what you know. You live in your rickety wooden frame of reference built from scraps of interest, memory and circumstance, and every now and then you realize there are strangers outside the window and they’re speaking in tongues. Do you need a translator, or do they?

I don’t know. I’m tired, I guess. I know how to say milk in Polish (mleczny) and I know the way to Waldoboro (up Route 1, hang a right). Everything else will have to wait.

In case you couldn’t stomach it yourself, the Palin tribute shows a clip from her Jan. 19, 2009 appearance on Beck’s inaugural Fox News show:

BECK: I think the problem with most politicians is they haven’t been at a Wendy’s drive-through in quite some time. You know what I mean? They’ve never actually said, “Yeah, just give me a Frosty, please, with the Oreos crunched up inside.” I think that’s a problem. I’m gonna ask politicians, “When was the last time, Governor, that you were at a Wendy’s and had a Frosty? And you ordered it yourself.”

Now flash back to the December 10, 2008 episode of Beck’s radio show, in which he described his speaking tour in Idaho:

BECK: The only problem with it was, I’m sorry, Idaho, but you have far too many signs that say “Next exit, 47 miles.” And when you are at least 47 miles away and you can’t trust that that exit has some sort of dispenser that could give you a Frosty, I just don’t know. You know what I’m saying?

Some guy named STU: It’s very, very understandable, Glenn, when you are away from Wendy and her services. I know you get very disappointed.

Mind you, this was just one month after Beck suffered a horrific assault at a Wendy’s where he was “going to get Frosties” because “everyone wants a Frosty.” You’d think the trauma of being verbally attacked by a racist Nazi truck driver might sour a man on this particular brand of frozen corn syrup, whey, and cellulose gum, but apparently not.

I can’t find any mention of an official deal between Wendy’s and Beck, but it seems to me a savvy fast-food exec might start thinking up ways to monetize this shillfest — also too, I hear Glenn could use a side of sponsorships with his Frosty these days. (They are delicious if you dip them.)

A few years ago I tried to popularize the term ‘braffed,’ a word to indicate a situation that has been overwhelmed by irritating mediocrity. Example: “Argh! My boss rewrote my presentation and put three typos in it!” “Man, you got braffed.” It never caught on, but once I tested the Ruined Music email list software by sending myself a message that read “Test test, you got braffed,” and in a stroke of misfortune, sent the message to the entire list. I braffed myself!

Zooey Deschanel
I want to think I’m wrong on this. Maybe if I hung out with Zooey Deschanel we’d discover that we have sooooo much in common, and we’d run around the Lower East Side shopping for adorable vintage bracelets, and she’d convince me to cut my hair in thick chunky bangs, and then we’d drink kombucha and giggle and swing our purses as we skipped down the street and then a unicorn would fly overhead and vomit glittery stars and we’d hold hands and promise to be BFs for F. It’s possible.

Then again maybe not.

Conor Oberst
Hey Conor. Yeah, look, a lot of people didn’t like George W. Bush. Most of us were able to deal with this without resorting to tripe like “Does God suggest an oil hike when the president talks to God?,” but then again most of us are not bugeyed professional daydreamers in Prada suits. Aw, I’m sorry, did I hurt your feelings? Quick, someone get Conor an absorbent sweater, I think he’s going to cry.

Sandra Lee
I have seen this lady on television maybe three times in my life, on account of not having cable (move to Canada you goddamn commie), but three times was enough to convince me. Plus surely you’ve seen the mashup clips that are circulating on the internet, this one being the best/worst (pet peeve: ‘expresso’), via Salad & Candy:

***BONUS: A Person I Have Already Punched in a Bar***

Sufjan Stevens. Except it wasn’t in a bar, it was on the sidewalk outside a bar, and it wasn’t an angry punch, more like a friendly one. Also he was very drunk so I don’t think he felt it.

Very early this morning I decided to take a walk, so I got dressed and headed up the hill and down the gravel path and past the horse pasture and onto the paved road, in what I might’ve termed good spirits if my mind hadn’t been completely blank. For the first mile and a half I was alone with the music and the squirrels and a couple of these birds I’ve seen lately (Kind of heron-like? Storkish? Except brown, and in a field? Ornithologists?), but then I hove over an incline and spotted two people, one about 1/10th of a mile away, and another about 1/10th of a mile past that.

So the first coherent thought I had today was that if these two people and I were standing at 1/10th mi. intervals in another context, an empty airplane hangar, for example, we would have no choice but to ask each other what we were doing and what caused us to be there. But because we were all on this little-trafficked road in the woods in the morning we didn’t feel the need to say anything, we just gave nods of understanding as we passed.

Gent, to Cashier, in a tone of Confidence: That was my ex-wife, y’know. Just left. With that fella.
Cashier, to Gent: Oh re-ally? That planned?
Gent: Whaddya mean?
Cashier: She here cause you were?
Gent: Naw.
Cashier: She say hi?
Meaningful pause.
Gent: Yep.
Cashier: Well then.
Gent: Oh, I mean- she gimme a ride th’other day, so, you know.
Cashier: Okay.
Gent: But I tell you what, she did see me out with a girl, too.
Cashier: Oh, well. There ya go.

¹“Christy’s coffee! It’s just like coffee, except made with sewage!”
²New magazines.

…identify ‘em all and I’ll buy you a hot dog and a box of sparklers.